How I built a bitcoin empire | Marco Streng | TEDxTrinityCollegeDublin

"How I built a bitcoin empire" looks at how a simple college kid from Germany had his life turned upside down by the 'rush for gold' of the 21st century.

Marco is the 27-year-old CEO of the largest bitcoin mining company in the world, Genesis Mining. Trained as a mathematician, he dropped out of university to pursue his business idea. Today, Genesis Mining boasts 300,00 daily customers, and prides itself of having created one of the most sustainable and profitable business models in the Bitcoin Cloud mining world.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at

It shows that nobody should delete any data. I still have the hdd image from my first machine inside an hdd image from the second system lying around as I’m using the third installation. (And that means that I only had 3 complete reinstalls in about 2 decades).

I found that the difficulty of mining bitcoins is regularly adjusted to keep mining at a constant speed regardless of the amount of people that mine. Market mechanics dictate that when the value of the bitcoin goes up, the amount of money spent by miners will go up to match that. Miners spend their money primarily on electricity. So large part of the bitcoin value is made of pure electricity waste. And some people are hoping that the bitcoin would become the world currency, basically making the worlds currency from wasted electricty.
Can some bitcoin guru tell me how that is not a problem ?

this is one of the many reasons why Bitcoin will be history soon. Think like maybe it will reach 5000 in 2019 and will crash in the 2020s to zero. But it is smart anyways to invest in Bitcoin for the short term gain which is almost certain to be huge.

your argument is assuming that bitcoin mining is going to go for ever. Please note that Bitcoin is designed to be a self stabilizing economy meaning that only a fixed number of coin will exist – 21 million to be precise. Once they have all bee mined, their share of the world capital will determine the value of each unit and you wont be wasting electricity anymore on mining them.

Another thing to consider is that if you think about a hypothetical situation of it becoming a world currency, then you should try to have an idea of how far into the future it’s going to happen because technology is becoming more and more efficient all the time and it is likely that maintaining a crypto currency operation will eventually be cheaper than maintaining a Fiat currency operation.

the straight advantage is that Fiat money wears down and has to be regularly printed and minted for circulation. Virtual money once created, will not wear out. Again pointing out to the fact that once the market has it’s 21 million bitcoins, no more need to be mined or maintained. just the ledgers have to be kept and updated.

You are right, after the mining is done, it could go up all it wants. That will take a while, so lets hope the value doesnt go up too much during that time 🙂

I also agree about the advantages and that a digital currency is the future. I think the chance that it will be bitcoin in its current form closely approaches zero. Im afraid the biggest chance is that the powers that be will someday introduce an official one while making all others illegal. Unfortunately, they will then ofcourse use these techniques for the opposite it was designed for: to make it all easier to trace and control. I sure hope we can fight and prevent that, but still the chance that bitcoin is going to be world currency is imo negligible and not worth the gamble of buying them now. (riding the bubble and hoping to get out in time can of course always be worth the gamble if you are confident to get out in time)

It is also true that tech will get more efficient in the future, but i still dont think it is a reasonable idea to have a block chain grow indefinitely in size. I haven’t studied in much of the different bitcoin systems. I assume this is an obvious issue that many of them already solved.

Genesis is a real company. Marco Streng is a true genius mathematician. This is real deal. Thank you TED for uploading this. I have been with Genesis since early this year and they never missed single profit shared from mining. Thank you.

I would disagree, we have over 400 members mining and receiving daily returns into their bitcoin wallet with more coming on who want to earn passive income. Set it and leave it. I can’t wait to see what this next year holds for all of us.

u pay the initial investment while they use the leverage to earn and pay u back on a 2% interest basis – yearly. WHILE bitcoin grew how much last year? & you need how long to secure your investments on genesis? of course without the possibilty that they might cancel your subscription at any point it turns unlucrative on their side 🙂 keep farming judy, i am not saying that you wont get the btc that you deserve with genesis, its probably even a 100% legit, but you’d still get your investments worth roi if you’d just buy and hold rather than getting your buy split up on 12 months or up to whenever they might cancel your ‘miners contract’. contract. digital. trust. ponzi. all these 4 corelated

Thanks for your input. Are you saying that a $360 bitcoin mining contract with Genesis would only get me 2% interest for the year? $7.20? So with your logic you’re saying if I want to buy bitcoin just purchase outright and if it falls, just hold on and wait for it to go up? I purchased a $360 bitcoin mining contract in Nov 2016 and as of today I’ve made close to $1200 on that contract…this of course includes some hashpower commissions I’ve earned. It’s paid daily like clockwork even when it’s dropped in price. The contracts are open-ended meaning no maturity date and if the contract stays unprofitable for 60 days then the contact becomes void. For it to be unprofitable, bitcoin would have to drop 60% of it’s value and remain their for 60 days. I’ll take my chances.

haha, so its again the good ole commissions that make the difference? shouldnt deny that the trust and distribution/affiliate aspect delivers a good return 🙂 judy, i appreciate you. you have kind of exposed this thing as a kind-of-ponzi scheme yourself right now, supporting my opening comment.

I really don’t understand your logic. You obviously don’t have any experience in mining? Has GM voided your contracts? The hashpower commissions are minute, very small dollars in the total I mentioned. The large increase in my mining came from the increase in bitcoin from $700 to $3000. A ponzi scheme is keeping your money in a bank and allowing them to dictate the value of your money. If our mining opportunity is a ponzi, I’ll gladly stay in it…my balance begs to differ the ponzi statement.

Dude,do a little bit of math.With the money you send there,you can buy same amount of crypto that you mine there.Example:If you mined in a year on Genesis,let’s say 1 BTC.The amount of money that you invest,is the same value as 1 BTC.Why mine few years,when you can buy it right now?There is no profit there,unless some people register with your code.It’s useless.

I’m operating miners myself, so my own statistics and my calculator told me that. If you manage 5 weeks you are either betting on a highly volatile coin or you are abusing your landlord’s free power policy. Tell me, what coin do you mine, what hardware did you buy at which price, and what are you paying for electricity?

TheNewTimeNetwork I have an Antminer L3+. I mine on Nicehash. I pay $0.17-0.18 per kw. I payed +-$1800 for the miner. I’ve done a little over $1300 since I got the miner on the 11th of Aug. Averaging about 0.01 btc per day

I don’t follow the logic where he jumps to his lesson to young people based on his experience. His team got into Bitcoin mining and has turned it into a profitable business. His lesson to young people, “If you want something and you’re really behind it, in today’s modern world you can reach everything.” I would think the lesson was, “If you see a big opportunity, jump in and try.”

Although, it should be noted that he’s not making his money actually from bitcoin itself. In fact, he sells some sort of dubious mining contract to other people that promises a return of some kind that, of course, people are complaining they never receive. Don’t believe a word this guy says.

Stephen Troup i agree he did not do a great job explaining since English isn’t his mother tougne though if you understand how Bitcoin works,you will get it. if u say u been mining btc back in 2009-2012 no one will believe if u say ur brokk

Ted – hey you want to do a talk for 20? we will call it how you built the mines. Ms- do I have to tell them how I did it? Ted – no you can talk bs for 20 just waste thier f*cking time. F*cking idiots. Ms – Deal ! Ted – And don’t winge you little bi*** your getting paid.